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Stewardship and engagement

As responsible stewards of our clients’ capital, engagement with companies and policymakers is a vital part of our role.

We are responsible stewards of our clients’ capital

The aim of our stewardship activity is to protect our clients’ interests, the value of their investments, and enhance the investable opportunities. We also apply stewardship activities to improve the sustainability outcomes of our clients’ investments, as we believe that supporting a more equitable and sustainable world is aligned with our long-term fiduciary duty to clients. Taking an active approach to stewardship is a core part of our service to our clients and complements how we manage investments.

Our tools and methods for engagement reflect the most appropriate yet effective approach given EQ’s investments are predominantly managed through the selection of externally managed collective investment vehicles (funds). Our stewardship strategy is updated annually.

Our active approach to engagement is a core part of our service. It’s an effective lever to bring about positive social and environmental outcomes.

There are five main components to our stewardship strategy:

• Ensuring fund manager stewardship ambition
• Engage on flags that emerge from portfolio monitoring
• Engage proactively on strategic themes that add value
• Collaboratively engaging with other investors on companies
• AGM Activism, asking questions directly to boards

Our strategic themes:

EQ engages actively with fund managers and underlying investee companies on key themes that we deem most material and we believe we can add most value on. This engagement helps us achieve the financial and sustainability objectives of the portfolios.

Stewardship & engagement update series

In this series of stewardship & engagement updates, we discuss the progress we have made on our strategic themes.